gentlemen in the middle ages. There were knights, esquires[1] and valetti, all military titles as colonel and captain and sergeant are with us, but not gentlemen or yeomen. No one ever described himself, or was described by others, as a gentleman before the year 1413 — to be precise before September 29 in that year — and no class of gentlemen can be traced before the third decade of the fifteenth century. This is a rule so exact that it may be used as a test of the date and authenticity of documents. It may safely be laid down that any charter earlier than 1413 which so describes a principal or witness is an impudent forgery ; that any glossary or nominate which renders generosus as 'gentylman'[2] was drawn up in the fifteenth century; that any romance, ballad, or cycle of ballads, in which gentlemen are introduced amongst the characters portrayed cannot have been written before the time of Henry V. Thus, to give one or two instances, Polwhele in his History of Cornwall (i. 25), speaking of the English army before Calais in 1346, remarks that the pay was at the rate of two shillings for a knight, eighteen pence for an esquire, two shillings for a gentleman and his servant, and threepence for an archer. We know at once, without glancing at the manuscript from which he professes to be quoting that it makes no such statement. Again, when Rogers tells us[3] that at the determination feast of Richard Holand in 1395 cloth of two qualities, 'for the suit of gentlefolk(generosi) and servants,' was provided, we conclude that he has not verified his quotation, and on turning to the document referred to we find that it speaks not of gentlefolks but of esquires. The material was not for generosi but armigeri, and the phrase secta generosorum though commonly used at a later period, is never met with before the year 1424.
In the reign of Elizabeth we meet with many lists of the 'knights, esquires, gentlemen and freeholders' of the various counties, but in earlier times, whenever the different classes or distinctions of rank are enumerated, gentlemen are strangely absent. The poll-tax of 1 5 1 2 gives us after knights
- ↑ Titles change their meaning. We should not nowadays speak of a baron as 'John Audeley, esquire,' of an earl as * 'Humphrey de Bohun', esquire. Earl of Hereford and Essex,' or of a king as 'Willelmus Armiger' (see Coke's Institutes', 1642, ii. 167 ; Spelman's Glossary, under 'Armiger'; and Selden's Titles of Honour, p. 442).
- ↑ See Wright's O. E. Vocab.
- ↑ Hist. Agric.' i. 121; ii. 643; iii. 495.
